Return to your roots, don tells Blacks

The Vice-Chancellor of Littoral University ( Institut Littoral Des Estudes Professionnelles Superieures (ILEPS), Port Novo, Benin Republic, Prof Ayeni Oyebode, has said there is no better time to inaugurate what he calls the ‘African memory’ than now.

Oyebode spoke at the inauguration of a museum and other artifacts called African and Negro Pantheon initiated by a cultural organisation, Negro’s Tree of Liberty at Place Bayol, Porto Novo, last Saturday.

He noted that if civilisation truly started from Africa, the time was ripe for the black continent to take its rightful place and reasserts itself as a great race.

He said the museum comprising various arts designs, sculptures, potraints of many African heroes, African drums, masqueraders, among others, provide a challenge for the academics to further sustain the memento.

Said Ayeni: “This is the time for us to go back to our culture – belief in God, agriculture and mother earth, hunting and other practical endeavours. There is a remarkable innocence about the gods of Africa. They seem naive and unworldly, believing the best of everyone and optimistically giving the benefit of the doubt to all sundry. African mythology covers a large area. There are so many countries, regions, languages, tribes, cultures, and imperialist crossovers that the sheer diversity of prevailing God’s would seem overwhelming if there weren’t a few handy short cuts.”

He said the African pantheon is more exemplified in the West African culture from Ghana to Nigeria.

He said the partial history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods – its prehistoric, in which the first human settlers arrived, agriculture developed and contact made with the Mediterranean civilisation to the north.